The Bare Bum Gang and the Holy Grail, Page 6

  And then they were out of there, cackling and sniggering and slapping each other on the back.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE GRAIL

  ‘I ALWAYS SAID that was a rubbish dog,’ moaned The Moan after they’d gone.

  ‘It’s not really Rudy’s fault,’ I replied sadly. ‘He does like a dog biscuit, and we ought to have checked to make sure we weren’t being followed. It’s something you always have to do when you’re on a secret mission.’

  ‘What now, then?’ asked Jenny.

  ‘We could tell the police?’ Noah suggested.

  ‘What,’ said The Moan, ‘and explain that we’d sneaked into this place, when it clearly says that trespassers will be prosecuted? Great idea. We’ll all end up in jail, and I’ll get my pocket money suspended for at least a year.’

  ‘Do you always have to think about yourself?’ said Jenny, and I knew one of their special sister-and-brother arguments was going to get started, which usually ended up with The Moan rolling around on the floor in agony.

  ‘Let’s see what this is,’ I said, taking out the book to try to distract them.

  In fact it wasn’t a book but a photograph album. I opened the cover. There were ancient black-and-white photos of a child sitting up in a big pram. The next page had pictures of the baby being held by a lady in a hat.

  As I turned the pages, we watched the baby grow into a little boy, and then a big boy. There were other children – brothers and sisters, I suppose. And a man with a big moustache who must have been his dad. And at the end there was a picture of a young man in army uniform, standing smartly to attention.

  To begin with, the gang carried on grumbling and complaining, but soon they were as lost as I was in the old photographs.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Jamie. ‘Why has King Arthur got all these photos of that kid?’

  ‘It’s him, you chump,’ said The Moan.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The kid in the photos, it’s King Arthur.’

  ‘Really? Oh, yeah, I get it. When he was a baby. And then when he was older.’

  ‘It’s the one thing he’s got, from before he was a tramp,’ said Noah.

  And then it came to me in a flash of golden light.

  ‘Wait, don’t you see,’ I said. ‘This is it. This is the Grail, the treasure. Not that silly old jar of pennies. Like The Moan said, that was only a few pounds. But this . . . this is precious. How can you put a price on a man’s memories, on his life? That’s why he wanted us to bring it to him.’

  The others nodded. Jenny looked like she might be about to cry. Noah already was.

  ‘It’s so sad,’ he said, a couple of tears rolling down his cheeks.

  ‘I think this might cheer you all up,’ said The Moan, who was looking out of the window.

  We all went over. Miles below we could see the Dockery Gang. Five little figures.

  Running.

  They were running because they were being chased.

  By Zoltan!

  And, right behind him, the security guard, who was waving his truncheon over his head.

  They made it to the tunnel just ahead of the dog. Dockery was the slowest runner, and he was the last one in. The dog followed him. I didn’t want to think about what was going to happen next. Well, I did really, and anyway, Jamie put it into words.

  ‘He is going to get his butt bitten to mincemeat.’

  We all had a good laugh at that.

  ‘But it means we’re trapped, doesn’t it?’ said Noah. ‘The guard and his dog, they’ll be by the tunnel . . . How can we get out?’

  ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I’ve been thinking about that. I don’t reckon King Arthur could have got in and out through that tunnel. He’s an old man. He couldn’t crawl through there on his hands and knees. He must have used some other way in and out. If we could find that . . .’

  We all scanned the fence, looking for the new secret escape route.

  ‘Look over there!’ Jenny squealed, pointing to a part of the fence on the opposite side of the tower to the tunnel.

  I followed her pointing finger. At first I couldn’t see anything. Then I noticed that the bottom of the fence had been peeled back to make a little doorway.

  ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Our path to freedom! Let’s go, before Zoltan finishes chomping on Dockery’s bum.’

  ‘Well, there is quite a lot of it,’ said Jenny, which made us all laugh, again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE ESCAPE

  I PUT THE photo album back in the pretty box, picked it up and led the way down the stairs.

  It was a lot easier than running up, on account of the Law of Gravity, which Jamie once called the Law of Gravy in school, which even made Miss Walsh laugh. At the bottom we crashed out of the doors and ran full speed for the corner with the broken fence.

  It was looking good.

  We were going to make it.

  Or so I thought.

  The first thing I noticed was Rude Word pricking up his ears. And then I heard what I been dreading – the distant sound of a savage dog, barking. The others heard it too, and everyone ran faster.

  I looked back and, yes, there was Zoltan on our trail. And behind him, as ever, the nasty guard. But the fence and the hole were only a few metres away.

  Looking back was my big mistake. First I felt a slight squelchiness. And then I found that I couldn’t run. It was as if my legs had been grabbed by some kind of creature that lived in the ground, some sort of earth ogre, say, or a giant spider. Then I looked down and saw it was far, far worse.

  I was trapped in the deadliest substance known to humankind.

  Sinking mud.

  Or, possibly, quicksand.

  Somehow the rest of them had all missed it, but I was trapped, and being gradually sucked down. The mud patch was about as big as the mat you use to play Twister. The more I struggled, the more I sank.

  It was a classic mistake.

  When you get stuck in sinking mud (or quicksand), you must not struggle but try to pull yourself out using a handy tree branch. But there weren’t any. I tried to remember what else you should do.

  Oh yes, that was it.

  ‘HHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!’

  Noah heard and turned. The others were already at the fence. He called to them and they all ran back to me together.

  Rude Word was the first to reach me, but rescuing boys from quicksand (or sinking mud) was definitely not one of his skills. He sat down and did a bit of bum-licking.

  My legs had now sunk in up to the knees. If the mud reached my waist I’d be as good as dead.

  The others reached me.

  ‘Throw me the box,’ said The Moan. ‘It’s making you sink.’

  I tossed him the box, and he caught it nicely.

  ‘Give me your hand,’ said Jamie, stretching out.

  I reached and reached, but couldn’t make it.

  ‘That dog’s nearly here,’ said Noah.

  ‘I know, I know,’ I said, trying to control the panic rising in my breast.

  I suppose I’d been waiting for this moment all my life. It was the moment of destiny. The moment when I showed what a true leader I was.

  ‘Save yourselves. Just leave me. You’ll have time to escape while he savages me.’

  ‘Never,’ said Noah, and the others all grunted in agreement. ‘We’ll get you out.’

  Zoltan was almost there. We could hear his panting breath, hear his pounding hooves. I mean paws, but they sounded like hooves. And the shouts of the guard reached us now as well.

  Then I remembered the supplies.

  ‘Jamie, the scotch egg – throw it to Zoltan, it may slow him down.’

  With surprising speed, Jamie got the scotch egg out of his bag, took a quick bite out of it – like a US Marine pulling the pin out of a hand grenade with his teeth – and hurled it towards the beast.

  As the scotch egg fell, so Zoltan leaped. He caught the scotch egg in mid-air, and sw
allowed it without even pausing.

  ‘The sausage roll, Jamie, now!’

  Jamie threw the sausage roll to the side of Zoltan. It was too tempting, and the big dog swerved to intercept it.

  We’d gained ourselves a few seconds.

  ‘Hold my hand,’ said Jenny to Jamie. He took it. Then she reached out to me. Noah held Jamie’s other hand, the three of them forming a human chain. A human chain of friendship. I touched Jenny’s fingertip. Then her hand was in mine.

  ‘Pull!’ she yelled to everyone.

  But it was too late. Zoltan had scoffed the sausage roll, and his attention was focused on us again. He galloped towards us and prepared to make his killing lunge, with his jaws open, his mouth watering, his teeth at the ready. We cringed, awaiting the monster’s attack.

  It never came.

  At my side I saw a brown blur, and Rude Word sprang into action. OK, more of a waddle than a spring, but there he was, putting his fat body in between me and Zoltan.

  The hellhound stopped in his tracks, and the vicious look on his face changed. He put his head on one side in a puzzled kind of way. Rude Word just sat there. Then Zoltan sat down opposite him. They stretched out their noses and sniffed each other. Then their noses touched.

  ‘I think they’re kissing,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Yuck!’ moaned The Moan. ‘That’s disgusting!’

  ‘Do you think maybe Zoltan is a lady dog?’ said Noah.

  ‘She must be. We’ll have to call her Zoltana from now on,’ said Jenny.

  Rude Word and Zoltana did some more kissing, but the guard was getting closer, and I didn’t think being kissed by Rude Word would stop him from grabbing us. I could hear him shouting, see the spittle flying from his angry mouth.

  ‘Pull!’ I yelled, and they did.

  With a huge sucking noise I was free.

  ‘Come on, guys,’ I shouted, and we dashed for the fence. Each of us dived through the gap. I looked back and Rude Word was trundling along behind us, casting sorry looks over his shoulder at Zoltana, who also looked sad about losing her new boyfriend.

  Once Rudy scrambled through, we all ran away a safe distance from the fence. The Group 9 guard stood there shaking his fist at us.

  ‘And don’t you dare come back,’ he screamed, ‘or you’ll be sorry!’

  The Bare Bum Gang responded by blowing raspberries, calling him names, etc., etc., until I told them to stop, as he was only doing his job, which involved him being mean to children.

  And then, exhausted, we went home, agreeing to meet up the next morning at the hospital.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE RETURN OF THE GRAIL

  WE ALL GATHERED round King Arthur’s bed. He was in a room with two other patients, both of them old men, both of them asleep. Or possibly dead.

  King Arthur looked a lot better than he had the last time we’d seen him. He was wearing yellow pyjamas. His beard and hair had been washed, and he looked properly regal, which means like a king, only posher. He didn’t smell of wee at all.

  ‘Who the heck are you lot?’ he barked when he saw us.

  Actually, what he first said was more like ‘Fwap mwap wmap fwap’, but then he reached into a glass on his bedside cabinet, grabbed a set of shiny new false teeth and shoved them in his mouth. Then he could talk properly.

  ‘We’re the Bare Bum Gang,’ I answered. He looked a bit perplexed at that, which was understandable. ‘We helped you when you fainted.’

  ‘I didn’t faint. I was just having a little rest.’ Then he added suspiciously, ‘Are you the lot that were throwing stones at me?’

  ‘No, that was the baddies. We’re the goodies. You asked us to get the Holy Grail from the tower block where you were staying.’

  ‘The Holy Grail? What the heck are you talking about?’

  ‘The treasure. The special thing – you told us all about it. We’ve got it here.’

  I held up the pretty decorated box with the photo album inside it.

  His face lit up as if someone was shining a torch on it. ‘My treasure?’ he said, almost deliriously. ‘You’ve really got it? Give, give . . .’

  I passed him the box. He opened it carefully, looked inside, and took out the album. Then he looked inside again. He turned the box upside down and shook it.

  ‘Where is it?’ he asked, half puzzled, half annoyed.

  ‘It’s there,’ I said, pointing to the book. ‘Your pictures . . . you as a baby . . . your life . . .’

  ‘But my money? My treasure, where’s that?’

  ‘Oh. The money jar. We’re sorry, but . . . well, we couldn’t get it.’

  I didn’t want to tell him the whole story. It was too depressing.

  But just then, I sensed that someone else had come into the room.

  ‘’Ere,’ said a rough and very familiar voice.

  It was Dockery.

  What on earth could he be doing here?

  He shoved his way between the rest of the Bare Bum Gang to reach the bed. He was holding out a glass jar. A glass jar full of pennies. ‘Me and the boys . . . well, we had a little think.’ Dockery was sort of talking to the air between me and King Arthur, not looking at either of us. ‘Felt a bit rubbish. Thought we’d . . . well, anyway, here.’

  He put the jar down on the bed. King Arthur’s bony hands went straight to it, stroking and caressing it like a cat.

  ‘And we added a couple of quid extra,’ Dockery continued. ‘Buy some flowers or something.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you,’ murmured King Arthur.

  ‘Better take these too,’ Dockery said, now looking at me. He placed my U-boat Captain’s binoculars on the cabinet.

  Then he put his big face close to mine. ‘If you ever tell a living soul about this, you’re history, get it?’

  I nodded, and Dockery barged out.

  Me, Noah, Jenny, Jamie and The Moan all looked at each other, not even knowing what kind of expressions to put on our faces.

  ‘We should probably go now as well,’ said Noah in the end.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen enough weird things for one day.’

  We all said goodbye to the king, and left the room.

  ‘That wasn’t quite what I expected,’ said The Moan, as we walked down the hospital corridor.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘He didn’t care about the photographs at all,’ said Jenny, sadly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bit of a waste of time, really,’ said Jamie.

  Then I realized I’d left the binoculars behind me in the room.

  ‘Back in a sec,’ I said.

  One of the old guys in King Arthur’s room had woken up, and he smiled at me when I came in. My binoculars were still next to the box on the cabinet by the bed. I expected to find King Arthur still stroking his money, but the jar, forgotten, was on the cabinet too.

  The old king had the photo album open at the first page, with the picture of him as a little baby in a giant pram. His eyes sparkled and his cheeks were wet with tears.

  His lips were moving, but I could hardly make out what he was saying.

  ‘Avalon,’ it might have been. ‘Oh, Avalon.’

  I ran back to join the others. They were outside the hospital by the time I caught up with them.

  ‘What now?’ said The Moan, scuffing his shoes on the ground, in a disgruntled way.

  ‘Something fun, I hope,’ said Jamie.

  ‘I’d prefer it if it didn’t involve stinky tunnels and getting chased by mental dogs,’ Noah chipped in.

  The Bare Bum Gang certainly needed cheering up. Then I remembered something, and checked my watch.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I do think we’ve earned some fun and some excitement. And I know just the thing. Follow me.’

  I led them all across town, refusing to answer their questions about where we were going.

  It was only when the grim outline of Corbin Tower began to loom over us that they guessed.

  ‘It’s today, isn’t it?’ said
Jenny.

  ‘It certainly is.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Jamie asked.

  ‘BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM,’ said The Moan, right in his face.

  ‘Oh yeah!’

  A big crowd had already begun to gather, at a safe distance, to watch the demolition of Corbin Tower. There were quite a lot of children from our school, plus plenty of grown-ups. There were two police officers to make sure everyone stayed where they should. There was one adult I didn’t quite recognize, at first, because he wasn’t wearing his uniform. And then he winked, and I realised it was the nasty guard, not nasty any more because he wasn’t on duty, and he was only horrible to children when someone paid him to be.

  The Bare Bum Gang huddled together to watch, and while we were waiting, I told them about what I’d seen in King Arthur’s hospital room.

  ‘So it was all worth it, in the end,’ said Noah, smiling.

  ‘We did a good thing,’ said Jenny, ‘and that’s what counts.’

  Jamie burped in agreement.

  And it was quite funny, because the very moment he burped at least six huge explosions went off around the base of the tower, and it was exactly as if his burp had detonated them. The explosions brought down the building with a massive crash and a great plume of dust and smoke, and I thought then, and I think now, that a really big explosion is definitely the best way to end any adventure.

  The Art of Tracking

  When you’re on an adventure or a quest, such as the one we were on to find King Arthur’s treasure, it is vitally important to be able to identify any tracks you come across. Imagine if you were on the trail of what you thought was a harmless bunny, vole or wimpy kid, and it turned out to be a jaguar, yeti or samurai warrior? You’d be in very serious trouble, and probably dead.

  When you are following animal tracks you should pay attention to various things. Obviously, there is the actual paw print itself. See if it has big claws coming out of the ends of the toes. If it has, you should probably RUN AWAY. You should also note the length of the stride (i.e. how far it is between each step). This will tell you roughly how big the animal is. If the length of the stride is quite teeny-tiny, say two centimetres, it is probably a vole and you are quite safe. If it is medium, say ten centimetres, it is probably a hedgehog, hare or squirrel, although it might also be a badger. You will still probably not be in too much danger, unless it is one of the notorious killer badgers, in which case RUN AWAY. If the stride is long, say a metre or more, it is probably a black panther, and you could RUN AWAY if you want, but it’s probably already too late to save yourself, so you should just hope the end comes quickly.